On Hiatus

I read this on the popular blogs or used to. The big guy blogs would every so often go on hiatus or decide the time had come for a makeover. Content would be static and perhaps the normal blog page with all its descending content would be replaced with a sign that claimed the author or authors and the theme were being updated. I never understood this rationale but I think the real message is that authors run out of things to write about.

What do we start these things for and why do we keep at them even in the face of moderating readership and people veering away to other content. Here are a few reasons why we keep at it.

We write blogs because we enjoy them and get some kind of thrill or satisfaction from doing so. We don’t care if others read or not. Its the writing of it. The catharsis of it that rewards.

We like to promote an ideology, theory, technology, belief. Witness the tech and news blogs out there which favor or diss a thing.

We don’t care if others read them or not. Very unlike blogging in its heyday when you were given authority by who linked and you gave authority by linking to others

We want some kind of connection with others that read or write. Some would say we need connections to be real so we write these things to inspire that connection.

We still count visits as successes, reads as mandates, likes and hearts and mentions as inspiring. We like it when someone favorites a post or mentions us on social media or praises or even blames us in places. We publicize our posts on various sites to encourage that connection. Maybe we want to write illimunating things to the visitors and let them see that we see.

We write these things for none of those reasons. I’ve been doing blogs for 10 years or more now and had my self-hosted wordpress site with the same name since 2005 or so and before that on Advogato. Sometimes I don’t write at all.

And the reasons seem to go on forever why we do these.

I only write a day a week or so now. Perhaps I’ve reached the zenith of the things and then perhaps I question the entire thing and wonder if I should simply put this instance on hiatus. I don’t have a good reason to do that since often I don’t understand why I write here myself so I will continue.